This is the story of a man who believes in all the British values of a stiff upper lip and keeping emotion in check. He also believes you can only truly love one person in your life; and he loses that love when his wife dies. Taking work as a teacher of English as a foreign language; he begins a series of affairs with his students; knowing that because each of them has to go home after a few months there will be no commitments and no future in any of the relationships. Until he meets a woman who turns all his ideas - about being English; about being able to love - upside down. This novel has all the emotional power and humour of Tony Parson's 1999 hit novel; Man and Boy.